


Say It Louder.

by jungle_ride



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 03:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11958510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/pseuds/jungle_ride
Summary: AU, set after Season 1.Skye jerks awake, heartbeat pounding in her ears. On reflex she reaches under the pillow, searching for the gun she keeps there, only to find her hand grasping nothing but sheets. It takes several moments for her to finally register where she is, memories coming back in flashes of colour and realisation hitting her with a rush of emotion. Taken. Kidnaped. Stolen.Familiar footsteps, echo down the hallway leaving her with little time to compose herself. Skye tries not to think how her unease must have reached him even in his slumber; like the connection, he’s been talking about since he took her is real.“It’s not.” She mutters aloud trying not to wonder why the words fall flat, dropping like pebbles in her stomach. The rattle of a key in the door is a welcome distraction. She watches; taking a deep breath as the door swings open, revealing her captor.





	Say It Louder.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HereInLies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereInLies/gifts).



> This is the first time I have properly written for this fandom and the first time exploring this relationship. To say it has been a blast would be an understatement although there was a lot of playing around, late night sessions as I tried to get a good balance between the opposing forces in Skye’s mind etc, so it’s been a labour of love for sure, but a joy as well. 
> 
> I really wanted to capture the idea you expressed in your sign up about wanting this relationship to develop out of character and how Ward is trying to show her that he loves her, even if that love goes against everything Skye thinks she knows. Of course Ward being Ward there is a little a manipulation and emotional blackmail in there as well (you don’t change overnight). Anyway that was my premise and I hope I’ve managed to capture it convincingly, even if just a little bit. Enjoy.

Skye jerks awake, heartbeat pounding in her ears. On reflex she reaches under the pillow, searching for the gun she keeps there, only to find her hand grasping nothing but sheets. It takes several moments for her to finally register where she is, memories coming back in flashes of colour and realisation hitting her with a rush of emotion. Taken. Kidnaped. Stolen.

Familiar footsteps, echo down the hallway leaving her with little time to compose herself. Skye tries not to think how her unease must have reached him even in his slumber; like the connection, he’s been talking about since he took her is real.

“It’s not.” She mutters aloud trying not to wonder why the words fall flat, dropping like pebbles in her stomach. The rattle of a key in the door is a welcome distraction. She watches; taking a deep breath as the door swings open, revealing her captor.

Despite his dishevelled hair and the pyjama bottoms hanging loosely over his hips, his eyes are alert. There’s a torch in one hand and a gun in the other, its glint of danger shimmering in the ghostly white hue. Skye’s not afraid. She knows he would never use it on her, the same way she knows the sun will rise in the morning. Simple. Only it wasn't simple at all.

“Fuck.” Skye groans, arms coming to shield her eyes as he scans the torch over her body, inevitably flooding her eyes with its piercing light. “Do you mind?”

Ward lowers the touch, letting the glow fall away from her face. He scans the room carefully, penetrating eyes shining through the darkness, gaze expecting. His body is poised ready for an attack as if he’s sure to see a squad of highly trained, heavily armoured agents surrounding her.

“There’s no one here Ward.” Rolling her eyes at his antics, Skye shifts on the bed, leaning over to turn on the bedside lamp. “It’s just us.”

 _Us._ Skye’s chest tightens. _Us._ She shouldn’t have said that. Why had she said that? A panic starts to rise, creeping up her spine, inch by tantalisingly inch. Her alarm is caused more by the easiness the word had come to her, than the meaning behind them which in turn only makes her chest constrict tighter.

“Just you and me.” She says, correcting herself, trying to sound nonchalant as possible but hearing the hitch in her breath all the same. Ward, however, is too preoccupied with his scrutiny of the room and doesn’t seem to have noticed. Small mercies, she thinks.

“Just you and me,” She says again as if the more she says it, the further apart she will able to stretch them.

Ward turns to look at her then, eyes narrowing suspiciously. In an attempt to ignore how his gaze is burning her skin Skye picks up the book (Greek mythology stories) he'd given her a week into her capture. Opening the book up to a random page, Skye has to hold back a bitter laugh. The bold black title stares unforgiving back at her. Persephone and Hades, Wards favourite (how fucking ironic).

“Done yet?” Skye sighs watching Ward bend down to look under the bed. Talk about paranoid. After four months, or was it six (Sky had lost track of time), you’d thought he would relax a little. Skye herself has long since given up on the idea of rescue or escape.

“So found any monsters down there, I mean expect you of course.” She bites out on reflex when she finds her eyes scanning over his broad shoulders and that ever familiar heat begins to build. Ward’s head pops back up. He frowns at her, irritated.

“Can you not?” Ward grumbles, standing back up and tucking the gun in the back of his pyjama bottoms.

“What?” Skye feigns ignorance. Wards frown deepens. Letting out a sigh, he turns his back to her.

For a moment Skye thinks he’s just going to leave, content now that there was not going to be an imminent attack. He doesn’t move. Skye watches as his shoulders rise and fall, wetting her bottom lip and drawing it through her teeth as he rolls his shoulders, muscles flexing with the movement.

“You know, _exactly_ what you’re doing.” He says voice thick, letting Skye know, she’s under his skin, itching away like fibre glass. Skye lets out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Ward turns back to face her, mouth twitching when he catches her eyes. Skye feels exposed all of a sudden. Too aware of her body and the way it’s responding to him.

“But I thought between us it's,” she raises her right hand, finding comfort in this charade of an exchange. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us, God.”

 _Us._ Fuck! She’d done it again! She purses her lips together, biting her tongue for its foolishness.

“It is.” Ward agrees cocking an eyebrow, the edges of his lips tilting up in wry amusement. Grabbing a chair from the corner of the room he pulls it back towards the bed, sitting in front of her.

“See, so I was just stating a fact.” Skye places the book back on the table, leaving in on the opened page.

“Skye.” Ward moans, almost pleading she thinks.

“You are a fucking monster.” She accompanies the words with an over exaggerated sugary sweet smile.

“You don’t mean that.” He exhales, running a hand down his face. Skye flounders when she sees the hurt in his eyes, remorse hitting her like an ivy wave. The guilt sat not on her chest, but inside her brain, a consent white noise. There’s anger to, hot and boiling, bubbling in her veins. It was a volatile cocktail.

“Don’t I?” It’s meant to be a barbed retort. Her voice betrays her. Instead of fury, there’s pain. An ache that quivers and shakes, like a pulse between them.

“No you don’t.” The certainty of his words weighs down on her shoulders, grounding her to this. To him. Without meaning to Skye finds herself leaning forward, the depth of his eyes drawing her in, pulling her closer to the edge she’s afraid to jump off, scared of the rocks that lie in the water.

“At least not the way S.H.I.E.L.D would have you believe it.” He continues, meeting her gaze head on.

“I…” Skye tries to think of a witty comeback or at the very least a token protest. Nothing comes. She turns her head to the window, seeing nothing but the shadowy outlines of tree’s in the moonlight night. Snippets of conversations flood her mind, memories of their time together here in the woods, buzzing around like a swarm of wasps demanding to be acknowledged. They build together, a swell of noise and feeling culminating into one singular message. _There’s good in him._ Its sting leaves her shaking.

Skye had tried. She'd spent hours composing the picture in her head of Ward the Hydra agent. Calculated. Lying. A brutal killing machine. Void of all emotion, no speck of goodness within him. That’s how S.H.I.E.L.D had come to categorise him. For Skye though, despite her best attempts, it had never formed right, always the disjointed Picasso.

After spending these last months in close confinement with him, nowhere to hide or escape the onslaught of his brutal history, every gritty, gory detail fully exposed and explained to her at agonising lengths. Her diverged mind was only further conflicted. Skye has told herself no matter what she wouldn't fall for it. Rebuffed and fought him all the way and still, she wondered. In the end, the harder she tried to deny it, the deeper her confliction had rooted inside of her.

“I..” she tries again, only to find her thoughts breaking up and reforming too quickly for her to process them. Ward takes the opportunity to close a bit more of the distance between them. Pulling his chair closer to the bed, he leans forward, arms resting on his thighs.

“You could have attacked me earlier. I gave you the perfect opportunity.” He says, almost like a question. There’s confusion in his voice, but also a raw anticipation for _something_. Skye pretends she doesn’t know what it is.

“What would have been the point? I can’t go anywhere.” She lifts up her arms showing him the black bracelets looking rings adorning both her wrists. They were high tech, top of the range. They meant Skye was unable to leave the perimeter set within them. They worked using a complex DNA coding, which in this case was linked to Wards. It meant that it was next to impossible to hack them. Skye had long since given up on removing them.

“That’s never stopped you before.” Ward laughs in fond admiration, gesturing to his body as if she might still see the red marks from her fingernails or the black and blue bruises from her pounding fists. Ward had never fought her back. Just stood there and taken it. He’d let her rage until she no longer had the energy, collapsing instead in a heap on the floor with tears streaming down her face. He had taken her in his arms then, wrapped her up and soothed her with hushed words and gentle caresses. She hadn’t wanted it but Skye had never pushed him away.

“But things are different now,” Ward admits. Budding hope blooming, soft and vulnerable at the corners of his mouth. Skye's hands twitch with the urge to reach out and touch it.

“Are they?” It’s just something to say, words to fill the silence; to distract her.

“Aren’t they?” He questions back. Skye says nothing, a deer caught in the headlights. Ward studies her carefully, his thoughts flashing with every passing breath. Finally, his eyes set, emotion locked, mind made up.

“I said to you once. One day you'll understand.” He begins, fingertips brushing the skin on the back of her hands. His touch is soft, barely there, as if he’s afraid she might disappear leaving him with nothing but air.

Skye recalls the day like it was yesterday, remembers the overwhelming loss and grief hitting her like a bullet to the heart. On reflection what standouts out to her now, what she had missed then, was the echoed emotion that had been in Ward’s eyes. The symmetry they'd shared.

“That’s what all this was about,” he gestures with his head to their current surroundings. "I needed you to understand. To understand me." Ward brushes a stray piece of hair off her shoulder.

There's intensity in his gaze that Skye has never seen before. He traces the curves and edges of her face as if trying to memorise every little detail. Like it’s the last time he’ll see her. It leaves her struggling for breath.

“And now you do. There’s nothing left to tell.” His eyes wrinkle in bittersweet melancholy. His hands work their way back down her arms and finally enclose around her wrists in a firm grip, fingers curling under the bracelets.

Skye doesn’t hear the click, doesn’t realise what he’s done until he pulls back, taking with him the black metal rings. Skye's lips part in surprise.

“But maybe it's not enough.” Ward lets out a deep breath, the sound almost mournful. Skye can see the fight draining out of him in that one simple breath.

“Ward?” She questions softly.

“Skye it’s been six months." He looks young all of a sudden. More harrowed lost boy than dangerous man.

 _Six._ That was the amount of pomegranate seeds Persephone had eaten. How many months she was forced to stay in the underworld each year. It’s a random thought, but it stills inside her like it holds greater significance than a silly story.

"Six months and if you don't believe in me now then you never will.” Ward continues, standing up and reaching behind to take the gun out of his pyjama bottoms, glancing at it sombrely.

Skye’s heartbeat picks up. Wards expression is weary, his eyes dimming, as though they’ve suddenly become tired from the effort of burning. Her body flushes with an uncomfortable heat as she glances at the self-made scars on his wrists. She can’t breathe.

“So tell me again.” She says suddenly, voice cracking. She can taste hot iron in her mouth. There's a rush in her ears, like the roaring of the sea.

“What’s the point?” Ward runs his fingers over the cold hard metal, finger flicking the safety off.

“WARD!” Skye screams and wonders in that split second if metaphorically she had been afraid for her own life all along.

“Tell me again,” Skye says, quieter this time, but there's still an edge of panicked desperation in her voice. Her gaze flicks from the gun to him and back again. Ward sits back down, following the demanded in her voice.

"It was never about Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D,” Ward’s begins, voice calm, face returned to normal. It's as if the previous moment never happened, a mirage in the desert. Skye hands, however, are still shaking; she balls them into tight fists, fingernails digging into skin, trying to compose herself.

“Right or any of their…what was it you called it?” Skye asks, waving her hand in gesticulation.

“Self-serving, fucked ideology.” He answers perplex wonder edging his expression when she gives a small huff of a laugh.

“Right, because it was only ever about Garrett, you were loyal to him.” Skye’s repeating back what Ward has told her. Expect it doesn’t come out like the scripted passage. It's neither flat nor empty.

“Hmmm,” Ward hums, eyebrows furrowing together, jaw tight. “After what he did for me…” He drums his fingers across the barrel of the gun resting on his leg, safety still off.

“You would have followed him anywhere. Done anything he asked of you.” Skye says. Ward had once compared his relationship with Garret to hers and Coulson's. Not for the first time she wonders if he’s right, even in some small way.

“Not that he’s the only one to blame,” Ward interjects a heartbeat later as if in anticipation of a rebuff Skye finds she wasn’t going to make. “I know my hands are dirty and that they won’t ever been clean again. I know what I’ve done and I own that shit ok. I own it.” Ward looks down turning one palm upwards as if expecting to see it stained red, clenching it into a tight ball.

“I keep seeing their faces you know, in my dreams. Everyone I’ve ever hurt.” Ward confesses, staring down at the floor. “I think I knew. Sometimes I think I always knew it was wrong.” He whispers it like a confession in church. Grip tightening on the gun. Skye's pulse spikes.

“But you believed you owed Garrett everything because he took you away from your parents, your brother and he gave you…” Skye trails off unable to find the words. How could she explain what Garret had given Ward? What had he given him? Expect for brainwashing and moulding him into a killing machine?

“I thought he had.” Ward contemplates, “I’m starting to realise I just went from the frying pan into the fire.”

Ward had once told her he was a survivor. She hadn’t understood what that meant for him then. She gets it now. Survival meant bleeding. It meant sacrifice. Loss. Guilt. A constant state of fear. For Ward, survival had always been taking the beatings and saying thank you. He had survived but it didn’t mean he hadn’t been breaking apart inside. Ward smiles when he catches her expression, but it lacks any joy.

“See, you do understand. But it's not enough is it? You still hate me.” There’s so much sadness in his voice that it makes her heart ache from the burden of it. Wards eyes trail down to look at the cold hard metal and then back up to her face.

“Don’t.” She says, firmly. Demanding. Reaching forward, she covers his hands with hers.

“Skye don’t you see, without you,” His eyes flash and there’s a sudden anger radiating off him. A ruthless, bloodthirsty air that Skye hasn’t ever felt from him, powerful and raw. She watches him in awed silence, mesmerised by the evident internal struggle he is faced, all from the simple prospect of losing her. Something tremors deep within her, like a chasm splitting the Earth, bringing forth something new. It takes several deep, drawn out breaths before the tightness in his jaw loosened.

“I’m afraid,” Ward mutters when he gains control of himself once more. “Afraid of what I’ll do; of what I’ll let myself become without you.”

“Let go.” she pleads tugging gently at the gun, making to remove it from his grip. “Please.” Skye’s swallow is audible. Ward watches the movement longingly. His fingers loosen. Flicking the safety back on, Skye places the weapon on the bedside table, discarding it without thought. She doesn't take her eyes off him. Afraid if she does, the spell they've fallen into will break. It occurs to her a moment later, she could have used it to escape. Held him and gun point and made him tell her where they were.

“If you’re leaving, it would be better if I couldn’t.” Ward presents it as a fact. Cold.

“Come with me.” She whispers, surprising herself as much as Ward. Having followed a newly developed instinct she is now sitting on the edge of the bed, legs either side of his chair, practically straddling his lap. Although neither of them has a relocation of it, Wards fingers are somehow gripping at her thighs, ready to pull her fully to him.  

She tilts forward a little and unable to resist, Ward pulls her onto his lap. Skye doesn’t stop him, letting her weight settle onto him. Her hand presses against his chest, and she can feel his heartbeat under her fingertips. There was a strange sense of exhilaration in the recently discovered knowledge that she was so integral to his being. She was the deciding factor in this. In him. To leave him would be to murder him. _There’ good in him._

“Come back with me.” She says again, surer this time, drawing him closer. His head now practically pressing against her chest.

“They’re not like you and me Skye. They don’t understand the darkness, or the grey is leaves behind. They won't understand this.” Ward mumbles. Mouth hot and wet against her skin.

For six months, Ward hasn’t touched Skye without her consent, or lack of protest. Now he runs his hands freely over her body. Up and over her back, leaving a fiery trail in their wake. Not sure when it was she gave permission for him touch her like this, Skye thinks briefly that she should tell him to stop. Except she doesn't want to so instead, she lets her body respond to each flicker of movement, leaning into him, clutching at his shoulders to hold her steady.

Although currently more interested in the way Ward's hands are now curling into her hair, Skye registers his words somewhere in the back of her mind. She knows there is truth in them. It would take time. But surely it was possible. She has to believe it’s possible. Otherwise, this moment right here is wrong. It’s a betrayal.

“You know S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t guilt free,” Ward says, interrupting her thoughts and filling the space with his own. “They're not the righteous saints they think they are.”

She doesn’t bother to protest. After all, when she had first met Ward she’d been trying to hack and expose them herself. She hadn’t trust them then. After everything, she's not sure she does now.

“Coulson is a good man.” Skye says; because that is something she knows to be true or at least believes to be true. Ward tucks her hair behind her ear, thumb stroking along her cheek bone and nods.

“Doesn’t mean he hasn’t done horrific things, or that he won't do them in the future. I mean when S.H.I.E.L.D commits their sins they think they're justified, that they're doing the right thing. So it's ok? But don’t you see, so do Hyrda. In the end, it's all the same shit just a different label, a different belief." Every syllable he says is dripping with bitterness. It leaves an unsavoury taste in her mouth. His words causing her to ponder. To doubt.

“I can’t just leave them, Ward, not after everything they did for me. I owe...” Struck suddenly by how similar her words were to Wards own description of his loyalty to Garret Sky's eyes widen. Was it the same? Even on some small level?

"It's ok," he says reassuringly. Sensing her discomfort. "Don't over think. This world we live in, all the secrets and protocols, the red tape. Spies and agents, it's fucked up. But if you ask me to come back with you again I will. Truth is I'd follow you anywhere.” Ward says, rubbing his nose against hers.

“But Skye you have to know that if you stay with them, one way or another, maybe without meaning to, they will tear you down. And those eyes you have, all that hope inside of them, it won't be there anymore. I don't want that for you. I don't want you to end up like me."

She’s tired all of a sudden, drained from the conflicting emotions squeezing at her heart. Why can't they let her be? Closing her eyes she tries to block out the voices, concentrating instead on the feel of his hands around her waist, the press of his mouth against her ear. How right it feels to be held by him. How wrong.

“I love you.” He breathes, lips pressing into the shell of her ear. Skye freezes, unsure if she's heard him correctly. Her heart flutters at the prospect, a strange flutter of butterflies and knives. Delicate and deadly. She has an uncontrollable urge to ask him to repeat himself. Pulling back she looks at him with wide eyes. Which she supposes is the same thing anyway. He cups her face between his hands.

“I love you.” His voice is firm, forceful in a way he’s never been with her before. Skye sucks down the breath the words had been formed on, swallowing them deep within herself. They feel like surrender. There's no chance she misheard him this time.

Skye knows love isn't supposed to be like this. It's not meant to be possessive and all-consuming. There’s not supposed to be this much conflict. Skye knows the knots in her stomach, the hitch in her heartbeat and the tingles on the back of her neck should mean _run_ , not come closer. But Skye's never been wanted like this. Desired, to the point of madness. There’s warmth to this kind of love that never dies. It flickers and burns like the eternal flame, running through your veins, burning you from the inside out.

“I love you.” He says again, hands wrapping around the back of her neck as if to keep her there. Skye wants to laugh. Doesn’t he know he’s already won?

“You were wrong earlier you know.” She says, leaning closer, lips brushing dangerously close to his.

“About what?” He breathes, eyes fluttering closed in anticipation.

“I don’t hate you.”


End file.
